Stone Quartet
by claudia flies
Summary: Four short stories in the dark side of desire. Mostly Anna x Gabriel.
1. In the Company of Wolves

**Author's Note:** All of these were originally written for smut69 challenge over on livejournal. They were never really meant to compliment one another, but they ended up as a continuous story of sorts. So now they are grouped together as a sort of alternative vision of the film.

I have never written anything quite like this before.

**Warning!** All of these ficlets are violent, gory, disturbing and contain sex. There are also incestuous and Gabriel/Dracula references. If any of this bothers you or you are not of age please do not read. And if you do read, then do no not come complaining to me. I did warn you.

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**In the Company of Wolves**

Gabriel rarely sleeps even inside the sanctuary of the Vatican walls. He sleeps even worse in the Valerious Manor, with its creaking walls and badly crafted windows. He cleans his weapons over and over again, the rags now nearly worn and dirty with oil. There is no light and the days are as endless and dark as the nights. Even when it is morning he does not want to go to the dining room. He does not want to see the cowering and scared faces of the servants, or the hostility written in the tense shoulders of the Princess.

They still set the table for four, lay the food and the drinks and then take away the untouched plates when Anna leaves. He has not even caught a glimpse of the elusive Prince and Carl sometimes suggests under his breath that maybe the man does not exist at all. Though only when the Princess is out of sight.

Gabriel does not like the house. It is silent and deathly, like a ghost house where no-one wants to haunt anymore. He wants action and blood and something to sink his sharpened blades into. The silence and the stillness grates him like nothing ever has, and the Princess does her best to pretend that he is not there. Her cold eyes move over him like he is vermin.

His blade is almost worn away now, too thin and sharp, and gently Gabriel places it back into its sheath. The house moans again, like a dying creature and he can see the floorboards move outside his room. He knows that it is the Princess; the footfalls are too soft and careful to be Carl's. He follows her down the stairs in the dark hallway. Meticulously she fills her revolver and the bullets gleam silver and sharp in the oil-light.

He follows her into the forest and down the frozen path. She makes no sounds, carefully navigating through the patchwork of roots, the route familiar to her. He hears them long before he even sees the path open into a clearing. The gnarls and the howls and the screaming that slowly dwindles into a gurgle. She carries on, paying no heed to the noise reverberating through the thick trees. In the edge of the clearing she is lit up by the sudden moonlight penetrating into the dark forest. Her black coat glowing in the light, and then she turns and looks right at him, eyes black and unreadable. But she motions him forward and as if on a leash Gabriel follows her.

The opening is not actually a clearing, but a cliff resting atop a small valley. She stands right on the edge, the tips of her boots almost touching the void. The sounds are more pronounced now, thick and they seems to almost float in the air. Gabriel recognises the sickly sound of human flesh ripping, and rushes to her side. Down in the valley three werewolves are feasting. He can still barely recognise the pieces what used to be a man; fingers of one arm still intact on the ground clenched into a tight fist.

Instinctively he reaches for his gun, the cold hilt familiar in his palm, but her hand stops him. Finger nails press into his wrist and Gabriel can feel the slow trickle of blood beginning to ooze around her fingers. He knows that he could easily escape her grip, and so does she. They stand still for long moments and the sounds of the wolves fill the air. When she is finally satisfied in his compliance she speaks, voice strangely hollow and void of her usual anger.

"I come here every full moon with my gun and I look at him."

Gabriel can see her eyes following a particular wolf. Its fur is silvery and bright. It gleams in the moonlight brighter than any of the others'; he is their prince, gnawing and growling, his teeth sunken into the man's ribcage.

"And every single time I swear that the next time I will have the will to shoot him."

They stand still and watch as the wolves clear the meat from the bones, their tongues lazily cleaning the blood out from the joints and crevices. Gabriel feels the rage in him build; fuelled by the torturously slow tickle of time in this dark country and by her withering looks. Still her hand holds him captive, the blood now dried and caked on his wrist. Slowly the wolves leave, abandoning their pack and crawling home in the morning in their human form. All except the silver one, it stays behind and watches up into the ledge its eyes full of intelligence and rage. For a moment Gabriel thinks it will charge up the steep wall of earth, but then it suddenly shakes its head, like a human, and disappears into the black trees.

Her hand still won't let him go, but the clench of her nails disappear and it is enough to break whatever spell the wolves and her had over him. He has been violent for so long that the action of his hand that grasps her neck and pushes her against the nearest oak feels almost familiar. He can see the pain in her face, can see the difficulty she has breathing, but her eyes are still dark. Her hands are twined in his shirt and he can feel the nails trying to sink into his flesh again, and part of him would not mind. As if she can see the thoughts filtering onto his face, her fingers tear the fabric and her nails press against his nipples.

He doesn't really know when he stops wanting to kill her and stats wanting to fuck her. Maybe it is when her finger twists his flesh and his hand slides away from her throat and returns the favour over her thin shirt. Her nipples are sharp and hard against his palm and he twists the flesh until she moans. Her lips are open and bitten red, but he won't kiss her even if he wants to, because this is not about that.

He nearly tears off her trousers and the seam rips under his fingers. He pushes the flesh of her ass harshly against the bark, wanting to draw blood and make her feel it. He feels no compulsion to prepare her and thrusts into her without warning. But she is slick and ready, and smiles wolfishly at his rage. She chants _now now now_, and bites him on the shoulder so hard that her teeth draw blood. Angrily he pulls her legs around himself, giving her even less control over their movements, and forces her hips tighter against the icy trunk. He wants to hurt her, make her feel his frustration, but each of his hard thrusts is met by her hips and by her teeth on his shoulder and after a while he just gives up and just fucks her.

Her climax is such a surprise for him that for a while he just stops moving and presses her against the tree. Her eyes are closed and thin strip of blood frames her open lips as the moans escape her like smoke rings into their air. When she is finally still, he starts again, part of the rage now gone; his motions are slower, gentler against her sore flesh. She licks the wound on his shoulder, and murmurs something against his skin that Gabriel cannot understand. Finally he comes, slowly and painfully, emptying himself inside her body while she whispers his name over and over again.

He leaves her standing by the tree; her legs oddly steady against the ground. She watches him, eyes knowing, but now more forgiving. Gabriel stumbles on the roots on the path on his way back to the house. He never hears her return, but in the next morning Prince Velkan joins them at the breakfast table.


	2. Small Crimes

**Small Crimes**

There is a strange man in his house when Velkan comes home. Anna tells him that the man's name is Gabriel Van Helsing and he is here to kill Dracula. Velkan tries to catch her arm as she walks away from him again, but she pulls away and won't look back. He can still hear her voice in his head, the vowels of the stranger's name stretching in her mouth and her strained face through the eyes of the wolf that he was.

He knows that she is preparing herself for his death. He knows the look, the closed off eyes of a young girl now morphed into the face of grown woman. She had the same cold detached air about her when their mother died. Anna would stand in the edge of the bed and watch her breath, count them under in whispers, and her eyes would be cold. Now she looks at him over the breakfast table with frost in her gaze and the food tastes of nothing to him. The stranger will not look at him, his voice full of scorn and hatred when he must address him. Anna leaves half of her food on her plate and leaves without her eyes never meeting him and Velkan knows it is time.

He goes to her room at night, but she is not there. The bedcovers pressed and undisturbed. Her rosary rests on her bedside table and Velkan lifts it in his fingers. Softly he palms the beads, tasting out the words of the familiar prayers, but now they are foul and unwelcome in his mouth. Like ash they freeze on his tongue and he stays silent. The room is filled with her scent. It is pungent and real to him so soon after the full moon, and it mixes with the blood that never really leaves his throat. Velkan buries his face in her coat hanging by the door. He wants to drive the blood away; he wants to remember her when he is no longer here. He wants to etch into his mind her laughter and small pearl teeth peeking between her lips.

He knows that he cannot remember these things, no matter how much he tries. The blood will clot and cloak everything in its ruby sheen, and he will growl and howl with the hunger and satisfaction after a kill. In the hallway he sees the light spilling from beneath the stranger's door and he knows that Anna is there. He can tell that her scent is no longer pure, no longer only _Anna_.

The hinges are well oiled and they pull open without a sound. From the sliver of the open doorway he can see; the room lit and open under his gaze. The stranger's foot is resting against the bed frame, toes clenched over the wood. His eyes are closed and he cannot see Anna with her body moving flush against his. Her dark hair has spilled over her breasts, like Eve in the painting hung in the library, and the candle light reflects on the droplets of sweat sliding down over her belly. Her hips swing against his in gentle waves, and Velkan thinks how she used to love the swing hung from the oak in the back yard. He wonders when the scrawny girl changed into this woman, and how she stopped being afraid of damnation. She breaths out, moans into the air, her mouth open and her lips swollen, and they are like blood splattered on her pale face.

Then her face turns and she looks at him, spying in the open doorway. He remembers her gaze, the same look when she watches him in his canine form. She leans forward, as only for him, and her breast nearly touch the other man's chest. She does not still her movements, merely pushes herself back harder, and Velkan can see the man's hands move over her thighs and hips, guiding her movement. And then she smiles with her mouth open, white teeth glimmering like a beacon to him. She knows that he cannot help but be enthralled by her. She knows that he is dirty and fallen from grace, and wants to revel in it, wants to see it.

But then she leans down her lips meeting the stranger's, and the moment is broken. Velkan is shut out even more securely than by the door. She moves with the other man, bodies in perfect sync, mouth fused like they do not need to breathe. Velkan knows that her eyes will never return to his.

The next morning Velkan returns to Castle Dracula in his human form. The hallways and arches familiar to his eyes and feet. He knows their smell and where they lead. He does not fight his instincts. He lets the wolf take over, lets the darkness creep in, and like he already knew the scent of his sister disappears from his memory, wiped clean by the blood and the rage.


	3. Decadent

**Decadent **

In a distant sort of way Dracula remembers Gabriel's mind, remembers the feral way he used to smile long time past, and he wants to twine the Princess' neck for calling it forth again. It used to be a smile reserved only for him, only for Vlad, in the forest when the blood of the game was fresh and still warm between their fingers.

But in her mind he can see the smile, twisted and angry, and now only for her.

She breathes out slowly, mouth open and eyes vacant, mind numb under his power. It is too easy for him. Humans are so fragile and so weak, minds of mingled twine of fury and insecurities. The princess is like they all are, weak and open under Dracula's gaze. He pulls harder and further into her mind, fuelled by his rage and jealousy.

The wolves are howling in her head, and if he looks hard enough, he can recognize her brother in their minds. But then again he always could. Then he can feel the bark of the oak, how it scraped her back and left long grooves into the skin, which have not yet healed. He can feel as the lacings of the dress press against the cuts, and he trills in the knowledge of her pain. He knows what Gabriel felt inside of her and tasted in her mouth. He knows it like reading a description from an old book, spoiled by the smell of dust and crinkly paper under his fingers. They are not his memories, and Dracula knows that deep down the Princess is laughing at him, laughing at his obsession.

He punishes her. He peels her mind apart, layer by layer, flesh by flesh until she is raw and open and shaking. Slow trickle of blood wells from her nose. It is stark and bright against her white skin, and soon it drips and disappears into the red of her dress. But it is still not enough. He wants more. He wants to peel her mind open until the final layer of Gabriel is exposed to him. The feral smile does not belong to her, and Dracula will take it back, wrench it away from her memories. For she does not have the blood of the animals, or the right to take it from him.

He sees Gabriel as he crawls over her on the soiled sheets of her bed. He feels the parting of her legs, and shudders as the desire for submission filters through her mind into his. He feels her nails sinking into his flesh and the blood that smeared on her fingertips and stayed in the grooves of her skin for days afterwards. He wants to lick those fingers, but Anna never brings her hands by her mouth and the memory leaves Dracula wanting.

He is angry and he pulls her head back by her hair, the fine clips and gold threads catching on his bony fingers.

"Give him to me!"

But she just laughs, the sound gurgling in her throat, and he knows what she is thinking.

_This is my mind, not his. You will not find him in here. He is in here._

In her mind her womb pulsates red and bright, and Dracula drags her to the dance by her hair.


	4. Touching the Void

**Touching the Void**

After All Hallows Eve Gabriel prowls in the house like a caged animal, and even Carl will not be near him. Anna is tired, her head and heart empty. She still feels the whirling dance hall around her and the cold hands of the undead. Dracula did not drain her blood that night; did not make her one of his kin. She sits in the library, has for the past days since they returned to Vaseria, her lips dry and pale. He did not drain her blood, but his fingers buried themselves into her mind like pinpricks of stone and she does not know how to purge them out. She reads the thin manuscripts of Valerious the elder without understanding a word. He's writing is spidery and spiky and sometimes Anna thinks that the letter will puncture through her fingers and bleed out all that is left of her, maybe they will drain him out of her as well.

At night when she curls into the chair in the corner, books piled atop one another like walls around her, she thinks that maybe it would have been better that way. Is it not better to be dead than half-alive? The books stare at her silently; their spines thick and ancient and they have no answers for her.

Sometimes Carl comes in and reads with her. He turns the pages fast and Anna knows that the letters won't make his fingers bleed. He mumbles and curses and taps his fingers against the table. Anna just wishes that he would leave.

Gabriel never comes into the library. He stands by the door, and watches her with his almost-wolf eyes and sometimes Anna wonders if he can see through her, if he can see the blood draining away and leaving her pale and void. She wonders if he is waiting for her to die.

She has fallen asleep by the table, and the stale smell of the book invades her dreams, they are now stale and thin like the books and she can never remember them in the morning. She wakes up to his palm on the back of her head and coughs, her lungs filled with book-dust. He does not speak, but his fingers are steel-like over her spine. He pulls her out of her chair, pushing her torso flat on the table. She goes with his motions like a marionette on a string. Her head rests against the solid wood and she reads the titles of the books piled on the edge of the desk, their Latin names meaning nothing, while his palms shove her gown up and over her back. His fingers spread themselves over her spine, and he growls something against the back of her neck, but Anna does not catch the words.

Then his palms spread her open, fingers travelling over her folds and sensitive skin. Part of her wants to blush and push him away, but she is too tired to feel shame, too tired to fight back. Her body merely opens under his hands and she grins to the old books and their tough spines. She is not like them, not impenetrable history, but flesh and blood and human, and if sensing her thoughts Gabriel pushes into her. The pain is sharp, like pulling her thumb on an edge of a blade, and it blossoms inside of her blood finally seeping into her veins and down her legs. She spreads her fingers on the wood and presses down. She wants to feel all of it, and lets him ride her like a cheap circus trick just because he is making her feel.

The windows are black and crusted with snow and she catches a sight of them in the dark glass. Gabriel with his teeth bared and hand buried in her hair, and her with her breasts hanging out from her night gown like a harlot and lips bitten into bloody strips. Her fingers try to bury themselves into the wood and she starts to push back against Gabriel's insistent rhythm. Watching herself move in the reflection on the glass.

_I must be here. He is touching me so I must still be alive_.

The thought is so raw that she has to close her eyes against it, lest it shows in the glass, in her face. And then through the pain pleasure blossoms; and it is harder to bear than the pain, harder and more real. She cries and moans into the wood, teeth bared and lips grazing the polished surface. She does not know if he hears her as his thrusts slow down. She grapples and strains for leverage, her fingers red against the wood. She swears and threatens him, her voice rough and unused. But he won't listen to her pleas, his fingers slowly travelling up her thigh and pushing her knee over the edge of the table. Anna feels herself spreading, open and vulnerable in a way she never was for Dracula. Gabriel's hands stroke her back as he moves, and Anna starts to cry. Her body shakes and bucks and shivers.

Gabriel lies down against her back, spread over her like a blanket. And she realises he had never stopped speaking to her, his voice low and through the rumble she hears her name, insistent and painful, like the promises he will never make to her. But her body is not ready, it quakes and she begs him through her tears. Long, shuddering _pleasepleaseplease_ absorbed into the walls of the library, and finally he kisses her shoulder through the fabric of her gown, and the weight of him disappears. The palm of his hand pushes her back, holding her immobile and he begins to thrust again. Anna hovers on the edge of the pain and pleasure, and her feet clench against the carpet and air.

Afterwards he carries her to his bed. His whispers never still against her ear, he speaks about Budapest, of the monster and of how beautiful she looked in red. His bed smells of wolf and of the earth. He murmurs against her breasts and takes her again with her hair hanging over the edge of the mattress.

And slowly Anna Valerious starts to wake up.


End file.
